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That's PLUD.AI.de.beast and use code beast for 10% off. Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN Guy and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. And I'm producer Jesse and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails.
We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some great guest co-hosts as well as some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media and beyond. Our goal is to try to make some sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of the New Abnormal. We thank you so much for being here.
Hey, we're back with another Sunday episode of the New Abnormal where I talk to someone who isn't from the political world about politics but also about what they're up to and what they're interested in. Today's guest is a comedian, an actor, a writer, a director, a musician, Lord knows what else. His brilliant show on cinema just started its new season this week. Please give a warm podcast.
Welcome to Tim High Deckard. Tim, thank you so much for being here. Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Absolutely. That's my generic podcast greeting to get things started. Do you have a button that you just pressed for that? I have a button.
Yeah, on a loop machine. I like a montage of all my podcast greetings. Put together a few more on that. Okay, I'll get on that.
Let's start with a little bit of politics. You're a member of the Democratic Socialist of America. What drew you to the DSA? That's a good question if I am.
I don't know if I'm in current standing. I'm supportive of them. I don't know if I have my card on me. I don't remember when they started doing this, but when they were going into restaurants and harassing members of the Trump, I think it was that Betsy DeVos or somebody.
I was like, okay, I'm into this. I'm into this sort of direct action. And then I kind of dug in a little deeper and found them to be a good resource for local community activism. They're a great source of information.
For instance, in California, it's just very confusing to know who to vote for when it comes down to judges and propositions and stuff. So they're just like a good resource if you want to lean fairly left. And Hugo Martinez running here for city council, certain people that are affiliated or members of the DSA that I think are important to support. Yeah, and Los Angeles also can be a little confusing because you have things like Republicans like Rick Caruso running from A or as a Democrat.
Right. It's a mess. And obviously the big city council shake up shows the corruption and how the Democratic party can tend to be, especially in a city that is run by that party. So I just think a little shake and pressure from the left is always a good thing.
And especially on a local community level, it seems to work really well because the people that are coming in from that have close ties to their community and have direct action initiatives to make real changes on a very small personal level for people. So if it works, it really hasn't had an opportunity to fully work because you're still dealing with a lot of entrenched laws and policies and stuff in the city. But it could become a good model to show how some of these ideas can work and that can grow outside of just the communities and cities and into a better country. Yeah.
And look, let's be honest, being in the DSA in Hollywood makes you very cool. Fourth tier hipster, top hipster level. It brings you back to your silver lake days. Yeah.
And look, obviously there's a lot of overlap between politics and just culture in general. And so for example, like, how about those Kanye's? I mean, it's just unreal. What's been going on?
I tried to stay away. But last night, I was just drawn into that Lex Friedman interview, but it's bananas. You know, it's just I'm not coming from a place of ever being a fan of his, you know, like I never, and just this is who I am. I can't help who I am.
I never understood the genius label. And you know, I just never clicked with it. Not like let down by that or him or you always seem dubious to me. So it's obviously sensitive because when you're dealing with mental illness, I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist.
I can't really analyze it from that perspective, except it seems like something's up, you know, like kind of all the red flags are flying in the wind. It's fascinating to watch in real time. I mean, we've seen this happen before with people that are like spinning out in front of us. But it's that John Mulaney horse in the hospital kind of metaphor that we're all just kind of watching this thing happen.
So I don't know. Of course, it's kind of entertaining too. Again, as you see, it's really hard to parse like where the mental illness and anti-Semitism breaks from each other. Exactly.
You know, as you kind of said, it's sort of like not even comfortable to talk about because obviously there are a lot of people who suffer from mental illness who aren't bigots. Right. And there are a lot of bigots who I guess technically don't suffer from mental illness in the clinical sense. Right.
Yeah, exactly. So you have to feel empathy for someone with a mental illness. But at a certain point, you also have to say like, well, hold on, it's not fair to other mentally ill people to just say, oh, hide behind that. Yeah.
Yeah. Like say, that's his mental illness talking when he goes off on the Jews and stuff like that. Yeah. I mean, you can be mentally ill and an idiot too.
Right. You can have both of those things going on. And I grabbed a clip from his interview yesterday and I was sent it to a friend and he's like, oh, you should put that out. And I'm like, why?
Isn't it kind of touchy right now with the mental illness? And he's like, well, no, it's like, you can make fun of him for being an idiot. Like that's fair, you know. Right.
So it was just this moment where Lex Friedman, who I don't like, there's a whole world out there that I don't really understand and don't want to. But this like, I don't know if you know this guy, Lex Friedman, I mean, he's very popular. Yeah, he's got this huge podcast or he's huge on YouTube. I know, but I don't know him at all.
Now we're just like two old guys talking. I know, you know, and I it's like, I hear myself and I don't like it. But it's true. It's just like, it's the same pond of like Rogan and Jordan Peterson and a number of these guys that have this platform that's like, it seems to me, it's hard to tell what's real anymore because of, you know, something's got millions and millions of views.
But then like, if you'd asked anybody in a coffee shop, they'd never heard of them. But all these shows, this format of the long form podcast, and maybe this is that too, but it is like, it's so boring. It's like these guys just toning on and this Lex Friedman is being here. No, no, not this.
When I'm on it, it's fun. But in particular, this Lex Friedman is like dry. The Kanye one is kind of not boring because you're watching this guy spin out and right and speak and like I'm making notes because like, this is all going into on cinema at some point, you know, of course, but in general, this guy's very quiet and slow and analytical and kind of talks like a robot. And I don't know, I guess people put it on to go to sleep maybe or, you know, I don't know how people get drawn into this as entertainment, but they are.
Yeah. And again, like the whole thing that happened, not that long ago with the the Try Guys, yeah, there was this big ado because one of the Try Guys cheated on his wife, the Try Guys that are on YouTube and they have millions of listeners or viewers, whatever. And I'm like, yeah, I don't know who these people are. I have aged out of needing to know who these people are.
I think I'm much more comfortable yelling at young people for not watching black and white movies. Yeah, I mean, like if you want to shock to your system, log out of YouTube and sign in as a new viewer. And it feels like it's like a good way to like travel to a different planet, you know, like, I never thought of that. Yeah, like the fresh YouTube user experience, like just walking into a new planet.
Oh, God, I recommend it and I don't recommend it. All right, so talk to me about on cinema, which is this absolutely unbelievable multimedia, someone, someone tweeted the other day, it was like a prompt tweet saying ancient Greece had the Odyssey or the Iliad, whatever. Right. And like, what is the great American saga?
And it kind of struck me just last night. I was like, it's kind of on a cinema. I would say it's the sopranos or somebody, I saw that. I mean, not to derail my own promotion here, but I thought that was a great question posed to the internet.
I mean, the grapes of wrath is a good one too, but the sopranos, it's got to be the sopranos, right? Yeah, a lot of people say Star Wars, which I get what I don't get that at all. Well, I get it. No, just in terms of in terms of scope and how much of it there is in its American made product.
Yeah, you know, the one thing that people are going to remember about American 21st century culture, like, yeah, you could argue with Star Wars, I could argue with on cinema. Right. Let's not argue. Let's agree that on cinema is wonderful.
It's been like 10, 11 years now, which is unbelievable. And so explain to our listeners who may not know, which I know is hard to believe, what exactly it is. It started as kind of this parody of Siskel and Ebert, you know, two guys talking about the movies coming out this week. And there are clearly two guys that don't like each other, which I guess was maybe the case with Siskel and Ebert, but don't like each other seem to have their own agendas, don't seem to know too much about the movies they're talking about pretty quickly.
We developed these characters and realized that we could sort of make this fairly low budget show where a lot happens in a sort of a soap opera sense, but not a lot of it needs to be seen because it's just two guys talking kind of about their week. And so we kind of just kept building these characters in this world and this Meg Lo Maniac, who's played by myself with my own name, you know, who has sort of a Trumpy, you know, Shister, entrepreneur with a million schemes and visions of grander, you know, contrasted with a guy who's just stubbornly stuck in this obsessive world of liking movies for all the wrong reasons, you know. And from that, we sort of saw that television, we considered a television show that was on Adult Swim's website, so whatever, you want a web show, that it was a show that could live outside of the 11 minutes in various ways. And it existed sort of on Twitter and in chatrooms and in spin-off shows and that it was kind of, you know, a universe of fans and, you know, me and Eric Natornakola and Greg Turkington building out this world and it can live in all kinds of formats.
And yeah, it just, it gets crazier and crazier. But it always, always what it is at the core. It's always this kind of battle between these two very different people trying to kind of push their agenda. And it's just very fun and funny.
And a couple years ago, as sort of Adult Swim, if anyone has noticed, is kind of disintegrated. And there isn't really a place on cable for this kind of show or really any kind of alternative comedy. Very few places are involved with that kind of stuff right now. So I think right around the pandemic, we were, we always do a big live Oscar special every year.
And it's this big production, three hours of kind of being on the air live and all kinds of stuff happens. And we, the pandemic kind of shifted everything. So the Oscars were a little bit later. Adult Swim wasn't going to be making any more of the show.
And we just kind of said, let's see if we can do this on our own with a subscription model, like a lot of people are doing now, certainly, you know, news publications and stuff. And there's a lot of precedent for it. But we wanted to do it since we have our own universe built, it felt like a great repository for not just the show, but all of our various spin-offs and ideas. And that the site itself can become part of the joke.
And it almost is the perfect show for it to have its own kind of subscription model because of all the flim flamory and, you know, snake oil style ideas involved with the show that the site would be a good place for that to live. So, you know, we launched it two years ago. And since then we've been able to do everything we've always done before and more. We've been able to make the show kind of sustainable and afford to make the new season, which is out now and Oscar and movies.
And, you know, it's kind of annoying because I'd love to do a ton of things with that model. But the world of on cinema is so kind of strict. You know, I can't do other projects under that banner. But there's still, I'm sure you've played around with the site or seen what's going on with the site, but it's our own little mini Netflix, you know, for that world.
So, it feels good. It's a lot of work and it's a lot of stress. We're like last night putting up the new episode and like getting last minute graphics changes. And I'm just like in my bed texting everybody, how are we?
Where is this, you know, like, is it going to get up in time? And so it's like you're running a network with no infrastructure, really, except, you know, half a dozen people that love it and care about it and work really hard. Maybe it would be great to have the safety and support of a big network making your stuff. But this is also really a challenging but fun way to do it feels good.
I mean, it started out a five minute podcast, right? Was you and Greg? When you started it, it had to have been, I mean, I have to imagine it was something of like a lark. Like, hey, let's do this and see what happens.
And there was no way you had any idea that it was going to become this huge universe with other characters. I know I could say the very first episode, it was a podcast and it was Greg and I were both working on the movie, the comedy, and we were roommates for a week or so in New York. And I think it was just at this time when podcasts, especially Mark Marin's show, but not just this isn't really a dig at Mark, it felt like there was a lot of other sort of superfluous, I like to hear myself talk kind of podcasts that were just dropping all over the place. You know, Greg and I kind of, we're very good and like honing in on very specific things that annoy him, that he sees in the culture, that sucker, or, you know, just egregious to him.
And that particular moment in time felt like there was just all these people glabbing about nothing, putting it out. And so we were literally just on my phone, like, let's do a movie podcast where we talk about movies that we know nothing about and we did celebrating very dry and very lacking in any kind of information and no preparation and just, all right, Ghostbusters go, what do you think about go, oh, that's a great movie, really good movie and a lot of fun and it's just like a time-wasting experiment, really. You know, I think pretty quickly we developed those characters and enjoyed doing it enough that we just kind of kept doing it. And I think just at some point I started telling the audience about my life, you know, and then you get this tension right away where Greg doesn't want me to talk about my life, he wants me to talk about the movie.
And then there's, we immediately pick up on that, oh, that's a really fun comedic dynamic to have is to have these two guys that want different things competing for the time on the show and it just kind of spun out from there. Yeah, and you mentioned earlier that in this on-senemic universe, you play Tim Heidecker, but no offense, you are an absolutely idiotic asshole. Yeah. And as you said, you're sort of like this Trumpian conservative type of figure.
So I guess my question is, what is it like pretending to be that? And I'm particularly curious because I used to work with some people who are now playing that same character for real on their TV shows. The second part of that is, are there people who think that's really you? There must be.
Imagine that there are. Occasionally there's confusion. I mean, when Donald Trump was running, we did an episode where my character endorsed him and read an endorsement statement that was bananas and very poorly constructed. And to me and you and most people who get it and are hip to what comedy should be, it was clearly like a satire of what a person who would be voting for Trump ends up sounding like.
There was confusion about that from the darker parts of the internet and people. So yeah, there's occasional confusion, but I don't, it doesn't bother us. It's fairly well understood by the fans. It's maybe an original sim of the show that we just didn't come up with two other character names.
Maybe it would have made our lives a little easier. It's a better bit to have it be your real names. Yeah, at the time, and to some degree still, I think it's interesting to have me be this person that contains multitudes. There's that Andy Kauffman thing of who's who.
It's a little less interesting to me now, but it certainly was very interesting to me 10 years ago. Yeah. And so season 13 of On Cinema just started and it's now called, used to be called On Cinema, Appa Cinema. Now it's On Cinema and More in the Morning.
And so you're somehow you've morphed into a Morning Show now. Yes. We were always looking at stuff. Last season felt like this kind of, there's that show that Ben Shapiro and his pals do that's them like sitting around smoking cigars.
Yes. If you've seen that, it's just, so we're always kind of modeling stuff on the world out there. And this was an idea we've always wanted to try and do. And you know, the things that make us laugh are the things that hopefully eventually make everybody else laugh, but is that title On Cinema and More in the Morning is just an awful title.
It's amazing. And it's a mess coming out of your mouth. That stuff is really what just delights us. We were playing around with the logo as late as yesterday, getting the final things ready.
And it didn't work. But things that we love to focus on is like, I wanted the title to be on Cinema and then And More in would be the second line. And then the Morning would be the third line. You know, so you're looking at this.
And it just looks so ugly to read that And More in is on one line. It's just that, I don't know, very small things make us laugh. And then obviously very big things that are going to come later in the season. But it still delights me the whole thing.
Like when we get our cuts in a couple weeks ahead of their just as exciting. I generally Greg and I laugh because we shoot the whole show in like a day and a half or two days at the most just block it. I just boom, boom, boom. And so at the end of that experience, we have like amnesia about what we did because it moves so quickly to like two takes of everything.
So I forget at the end of the day, it's like I've just been wiped from my mind what we ended up doing. So getting these cuts is exciting to watch almost like a new viewer. And it just just makes me laugh. Like it just it still entertains me.
This Greg is still hilarious. And yeah, I have not tired of doing that character. I've not tired of the format. It's just there's always going to be movies coming out.
You know, that was always kind of a motto. Yeah, there's always pray for the devil and then have a 10 minute argument over whether it's P.R.A.Y. or P.R.E.Y. which is in the first episode of the season, which is just it's just amazing because it starts out for people who've never watched.
It's Greg Tuckington giving this review of a movie that he clearly doesn't understand at all. But he loves movies. So you sort of, you know, at least for me anyway, you become a bit of a Greg head because at least he loves movies. And then it's you being upset that the name of the title is Pray for the Devil because that's not the kind of message you want to spread on the show.
And then you say but thankfully it's spelled P-R-E-Y and you're looking at your card and you're going and then Greg is like no, it's not. It's P-R-A-Y and then you'll start to know it says here on the card and this devolves into like a five minute argument about how it's on the card. Yeah, but what's on the card doesn't matter. It's what's on the posters and what's the movie actual title and it's just so surreal.
But at the same time it's somehow also a great parody of morning shows. The morning show format has been spoofed enough that it's not the most groundbreaking thing to do. But it's more like I said earlier this idea that even though we change formats and we change sets and there's new people that come in, it's essentially this same guy rolling the boulder up the mountain whatever that Greek analogy is. You know, it's the same dynamic.
But the other thing I was just going to say because I know on Twitter you jump into the conversation and I think it's another very unique and I don't there might be other examples of this but I can't think of one and I think it's going to start going more this way with traditional television is that the show's audience participates in like they're in character. They play along and so you almost like you know professional wrestling or something it's been compared to. But you take sides with these characters and when the audience is engaging online it's like you know when this episode dropped all the Greg heads are coming out saying how much they hate it and how they're upset and we need more movie talk and it becomes this you know multiplayer role playing experience that people just love and enjoy being active participants in the story of the show. I just think that's very unique and it happened completely organically.
It wasn't like we sat around and designed it to happen. It was the audience that came with that attitude and partly I think because we play and I'm not exclusively that character on Twitter but a lot of times I communicate storylines and you know there's conflict between me and Greg on Twitter. It's been going on for years that you can like see happening in real time and I mean tell me if I'm wrong but I don't know about any other show that engages in different ways like that. So maybe it is the great American epic.
That's what I'm saying. It's absolutely amazing. And particularly the Twitter stuff and what's amazing about the Twitter stuff is like sometimes you are the real Tim Heidecker and then other times you're the character Tim Heidecker and you can always tell because the spelling is terrible. Yeah it's my cue as I just type those galore and yeah and it's amazing but no I think you're right and I am you know I'm in a vowed Greg head you know till I die.
Yeah the other thing I was going to bring up about the dynamic in the show that I think and you're going back to this pray for the devil joke is we always try to make sure that as the show moves forward it's not this one-sided thing where I'm this brute idiot with no redeeming qualities and just an abuser. I am most of those things but we make sure that I'm right sometimes and I'm sometimes more reasonable than Greg and what we want to make the audience feel is like it's hard to root for either of these guys you know like Greg has killed people. Yeah I mean there's like a rotten ness to him that is sort of more subtle and more pathetic and we love playing with the idea that there is not really a good guy bad guy straight man funny man that these are two complicated characters that are not always one thing but we're always like in almost like in the Breaking Bad Model of like we're gonna make it really if you're gonna be identifies a Greg head like good luck it's going to be a rocky road because this guy has his own problems that are very different but you know there's a pathetic quality to that character for sure and both of them and so yeah that's the kind of early conversations we always have about the season and how the show is gonna go is how do we make them dynamic and you know not just one note. Before I let you go I have to ask I think it was last year it was 2021 you did an unbelievable parody of Joe Rogan's show along with the hilarious comedians Rijat Suresh and Jeremy Levick and it just sort of dropped out of nowhere like I don't know if you would had a plan for a long time and just in telling one or if it was like a last minute thing you're like hey let's do this but it just kind of felt like it dropped out of nowhere and it is just an absolutely amazing hour of just it's like everything you do it's funny in its own right but it's also just an unbelievable parody of Rogan.
Thank you I mean it doesn't look or sound like him which sometimes are better you know it's not like a it's not it's a parody of not an impression I guess yeah you're right yeah exactly yeah I mean that that definitely came here on office hours as like just again I kind of honed in on what I felt is the most egregious part of that show which is the is how boring it is how it is how it there's nothing there's no progress being made there's no there's no conclusion to it like I don't know I've never seen the end of one of those episodes you know because I just eventually tap out because it's just so self-obsessed or whatever it is that it's just these like just the most boring conversations over and over again every day with with sometimes interesting people that he seems to suck the life out of and so I just I'm confused and can't understand the appeal and the popularity aside from like sort of the dangerous rhetoric that ends up coming up on that show over and over again so instead of just kind of doing a daily show style kind of takedown of politics of it I just wanted to put the focus on the entertainment value of it or just the absurdity of some of the long of the long windedness of it the circles that these guys tend to get into and yeah so I love Rajat and Jeremy I think they're hilarious and asked them to do it and we were all on the same page I think the plan was we just kind of had a google doc with some names of books and names of fake comedians and doctors and you know just had a little bit of a reference guide they had some things they had in mind but I just said let's just roll and shoot the shit and try not to make any um to monster points that matter you know just try to talk and double speak which that's the vibe I get from that show yeah what you really nailed for me is like people always say about your Rogan his fans and even some of his detractors will say well but he's he's very curious he's very open-minded and I'm always like no he's not curious he's credulous like he just he hears things and he's like a real life David St. Hubbins from spinal tap where he believes everything he reads everything and believes virtually everything yeah yeah it's a great line and you captured that so perfectly like Rajat or Jeremy would say something so absurd and you would just you know that's fascinating how did we get here yeah and you captured it so perfectly and it's exactly what I what I don't like about Rogan and so I loved it well thanks yeah we dropped it on Thanksgiving and just put it on a loop I think that was part of why it kind of blew up a little bit was because we just had it running all day and the quick take on it was that we actually did it for this crazy amount of time you know because it appeared that I was right because that's the thing about Rogas they appear to just start in the mid like they start recording like in the middle of a conversation I never hear any kind of conclusion and never hear any kind of like you know there's no breaks except for reading ads and it's that's that feeling of like I feel like I'm losing my mind listening to these people talking that I don't have a way into they all seem to know each other that was that thing about that Lex Freeman Kanye it's like he keeps saying what a great friend he is and how I care about him it's like how do you all know he like where's everybody meeting up like how do you get in that scene I'm not that I want to be but it's just like the other one that's added now is Bill Mar with his club random if you've got a chance to wipe that's like sub Rogan content going on in his basement of horrors we're all guilty of blab and too much I guess but it's just the preponderance it's just I can't wrap my head around why it's cheap to make that's probably the big plus for these people you know it's cheap to make these shows but other than that it just seems like nothing's nothing's getting accomplished from these conversations and no no learning is happening and no entertainment is happening but who am I to say any of this because it's popular it's I'm just one man's reaction to it I mean it's you know keep doing these shows I'm not trying to say first of all I'm not trying to say nobody I'm not trying to cancel anybody and say we're trying to cancel Joe that's our headline I think from this is Tim Heidegger cancels Joe Rogan go for it and and you know I even got a lot of shit because I felt uncomfortable supporting Spotify because he's like their major guy you know and all I'd said was I don't want to pay Spotify anymore you know like I don't want to pay that because I like other platforms better and there's a million reasons to not like what Spotify's doing and and I just get you know piled on saying I want to cancel Joe Rogan's like no I just don't want to throw money into that pot but everybody could do what they do you ask me to come on a show I'm going to tell you what I think that's all there is to it I don't really have an agenda okay I don't know I'm about to go so defensive there I apologize I really did wow I know turn into an incentive there I know I really did all right well much like Greg Tuckington I'm looking at the time of this podcast unfortunately we are out of it so Tim thank you so much for being here I really appreciate it was so much fun talking to you this is how I close my podcast interviews I say thanks for having me hope you enjoyed checking out this episode of the new web normal we're back every Tuesday Friday and Sundays if you enjoyed it please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going see you next time want more great listens check out our comedy podcast the last laugh and our star started the daily beast podcast at the daily beast dot com slash podcast if you enjoyed this episode consider becoming a daily be subscriber subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline head to the daily beast dot 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